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Like a lot of bands, Black Violin’s Wilner “Wil B” Baptiste and Kevin “Kev Marcus” Sylvester got their start booking whatever time they could in local clubs. But at first sight, the duo wasn’t the easiest sell to Miami promoters.
“It was tough getting in there. It was ‘Hey, these two black guys play the violin,'” Baptiste remembers. “But we’d pull up in the Expedition, put music on, pull out our violins and play right there. And they’d be like ‘That’s dope, man. Come through at 9 o’clock.’ We’d give the (DJ) a track and come out and just rock it. Everyone would be having a good time, and look up and go ‘Wait. What am I looking at?'”
He laughs.
“Most of the time people were drunk anyway.”
The South Florida club scene eventually gave way to a wider – and presumably more sober – array of audiences for the Broward County natives, including the troops in Iraq, the Billboard Awards, the Apollo Theatre and the 2013 Presidential Inauguration Ball and the Kid’s Inauguration. Friday, Baptiste, Sylvester and their band will appear Saturday at a benefit for the Plumosa School of The Arts’ “Shoot For The Stars” benefit in Delray Beach.
Schools like Plumosa are near and dear to Black Violin, whose principals met as students at Miami’s Dillard High School, an arts and technology magnet. Growing up in “the hood,” as Baptiste says, the two listened to Tupac and the hip-hop of the day, and then went to a school where it was just as natural for the majority black student population to play classical music, or to dance, or to be in the band.
“We didn’t feel isolated,” he explains. “We were putting classical and hip-hop together, because we were of both worlds, and it was natural to put the two together. It was fun and kept us going. It kept us from doing other crazy things. It kept us busy.”
Baptiste says that their school’s string program and some great teachers kept them going through graduation. Sylvester discovered the basis of what would one day be the band’s name in college, where a teacher introduced him to the work of late African-American jazz violinist Stuff Smith, and his album “Black Violin.”
“He was this black guy in the 1960s playing the violin. It was hot,” Baptiste says. “Kevin had never heard of him, but he had never heard anything like it. The way he was playing, it sounded black. That was something that really opened out eyes. We’re always thinking outside the box, and this solidified that. That’s the reason we call ourselves Black Violin, although obviously we’re black and we play the violin.”
When they reunited, they started a home studio and their own label, improvising with beats and jamming and putting together medleys of popular songs. The response they got was positive but typical of been-there, declared-that passe Miami audiences – “People don’t react immediately, like ‘Hey, that’s hot.’ They wait and see if everybody else thinks it’s hot,” he says. “But afterwards, we’d be outside, and they’d say ‘Yo, that was crazy! That was dope!”
Besides innovating and creating, Baptiste says that the members of Black Violin want all kids, regardless of their ethnicity or neighborhood, to believe that, say, playing the violin is as organic and normal as they felt it was growing up, “to understand that what I’m doing has been around for 400 years, and I know you’re used to seeing a white guy do it, but you can do the same thing and surprise us in the future.'”
Don’t believe them? The proof is in the music.
“Look at us. You have to think differently when you see us. We don’t look like, or dress like, the expectation of whatever it is, who normally plays classical,” he continues. “You can look at us and say ‘You folks are not supposed to be doing what you’re doing.’ We want to get them in elementary school. They can talk to you, and fell your energy. It’s impactful, the things that people tell you when you’re younf. They don’t care about what older people think. Who cares about odler people? Kids don’t necessarily care until they’ve been taught that way.”